the short story as poem is in truth a tale.

To see the short story as poem is to wrest it from writers, i.e., propagandists, axe-grinders, diploma chasers, genre specialists, gobbledegook post-structuralists, obstructionists, existentialist bores, deconstructionists [hard to tell one from another], Ists of all variety, sermonizers, shallow headed columnists, hacks, and authoritarian shit heels and give it back to the poets.

Writers write. Poets compose.

Poets who are any of the above are not poets. They are jerks pretending to be poets. The poor dears know not why this is nor do they know what I know in my bone marrow, that poets are the resurrectionists of structure which originates meaning and thereby marries flesh and spirit into a tactile whole. We create myth from the soil and vegetative force of Earth. Scientists are the only other people I know who possess any understanding of this essential fact. Writers are the last to see it so obstinately steadfast in their assertions are they that 'it' is about 'language' or else it is about their jealously guarded specialties. They go out of their way to scribble mundanities like a slap in the face and then wonder why they go ignored. Those who believe that language is everything wonder why they are left standing at the train station. They beg the question 'what is language about? What is it for? And why am I able to make music with it? And why does this music move me? And why do I discern through the muddle of my expectations the face of the Beloved taking shape?

I studied ballads because I couldn't understand where the music and the story-telling merged. I wrote a few...dozen until I was able to discern the buzz in the bone marrow where all understanding resides, it seems. How to apply my strange new knowledge to the shooooooooooort storrrrrrrrrrrry defied my understanding. In the mid-1980s I managed to waste years composing stories in stanza form of a strict geometrical structure and hitting my head on the wall because the results were so terrible. This went on until I took another look at Whitman's poetry. It was not until I was actually able to see the poetry in Whitman that I learned to apply his cadences to forming paragraphs and then I saw precisely why an old professor of mine had once called the short story narrative poetry.

This past year I put my idea to paper and composed an epic poem in the American short story vernacular. I am completely willing to give the short story back to genre specialists et al. I always despised genre-writing. If the prosaic produce it in all their glorious banality let it be called a short story. I will call it for my own purposes a tale, hence the title of my epic poem: 13 Tales of Nephi Gass. The tale was good enough for Hawthorne and Poe, those giants who first distilled the elixir, and it's good enough for me.

The resonance of the old ballads my folks sang resonates in my bones today. To apply the principles there of to my gifted form, the tale, is to achieve something I can truly love. It is the perfect way to avoid analysis--that vivisection of the heart.